Butthole Surfers at Manchester in July 2008
I’m so glad I didn’t bring a date to Butthole Surfers. It’s not that I didn’t have a weirdo fantastic time. I did. It’s that while I had this fantastic time, I also watched pretty much continuous video of people’s faces exploding. Butthole Surfers performed a loud, tight set of their weirder jams in front of a 20-foot projection screen last night, and they did everything on purpose. You could tell because the video was admirably synched—even when it was video of, say, a screaming Japanese woman getting her limbs pulled off and therefore gaining the ability to fly, or Scanners. It was gross and then it was interesting and then it was really gross in a way that became hypnotic. Once again, Butthole Surfers made me like them by doing stuff to me that I didn’t like.
I like Butthole Surfers so much more than I like their music. Their music is what the blues would sound like if the human condition were you’re born, you age, a worm comes out of your head. Some of it is really good. Almost all of it is really well made, both in composition and production.* 
But not much of it before Electriclarryland is fun to listen to. For those of you who vaguely remember the name Butthole Surfers, here’s why:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nJLVP_s_M8
That’s Electriclarryland Butthole Surfers, and it was top of the Billboard Modern Rock chart in 1996. Thanks to my avid readership of grocery-store guitar magazines, I knew of Butthole slightly before that, even before “Who Was In My Room Last Night?” But I am still New Butthole. Compared to Old Butthole, New Butthole is extremely melodic. I mean, come on—those are songs. Real fans prefer Old Butthole, like this track from the Rembrandt Pussyhorse LP:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGrO-08Rmyg
Last night’s set was a lot more Old Butthole, at least to judge by the cautiously joyful reaction of fellow concertgoer and old butthole Jason McMackin. They played “Pepper,” but they played it in a chopped and screwed fashion that was not strictly respectful. Frankly, it was the only dignified move. I was thrilled to see Butthole Surfers, as were about 800 other Missoulians, but the fact remains that they have not released an album in ten years. Again, Butthole Surfers, thank you for touring. But why?
The answer, as last night made clear, is the show. Even at their most commercially viable, Butthole Surfers were as much performance art as music. Back in the eighties, singer Gibby Haynes gave this interview:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEuKiqnnOPM
That’s about his métier. Gibby is fascinated with worms, the unexpected appearance of blood, penises and watching your reaction as he explains those things. Now he is fifty. To continue to pose as provocateur would be humiliating. To trade on his limited commercial success would be to erode the value of his reputation. The only way to preserve his dignity, at this point, is to keep on actually provoking people. Fortunately, he has gotten really good at it.
Last night’s show was weird. It started with 400 Blows, an exhilaratingly tight noise metal trio whose basic approach is to get onstage and try to hypnotize you. They were loud, they shouted about the inevitability of death, the drummer was awesome. Then for 20 minutes Skot Alexander disconcertingly abandoned his fascist stage persona to move amps and be nice to everyone in the lobby, and then Butthole exploded into a somehow louder wall of hypnotic riffs. Gibby played the saxophone, which is normally a bad omen, but even that seemed oddly proficient. Then I looked up and saw a 20-foot image of a woman’s jaw tearing off. I was horrified, and I realized that my horror coincided with a crescendo in the music, and that’s when I noticed how good everything sounded.
Leary’s guitar work was distinct and well-phrased. Gibby’s voice sounded great, louder than everything else when it needed to be and washed out when it didn’t. The drums were constant. In fact, the whole show was continuous—uninterrupted by Gibby’s sometimes awful patter, loping from one song to the next at a steady, driving pace that was, to use the same word again and again, hypnotic. By the end of the night I felt almost sick, the way you do after Schindler’s List. Butthole Surfers live is like if Schindler’s List were a comedy and World War II were a battle of the bands. It does not make you feel good, even though it is awesome to go. It is not there to rock you, even though it is insanely heavy. Butthole Surfers makes sensations. As chaotic as it seems, it is art.
